Monday, May 13, 2013

Nobody wins a gross brother battle

Again, we interrupt the story for news of...some pretty gross stuff. I, uh, hesitate to admit how easily these ideas came to mind...or the kinds of ideas that were too risque for me to include in a family-friendly website.

More later.
Later took longer than I anticipated.

So, there's not much to say about this comic. I haven't drawn Alek (on paper) in a while. That was fun, and it certainly bolsters my ego when I discover I can still pick up all the nuances of drawing a rusty character...but really I was more disappointed with the product than I should like to be.

I've been watching Avatar: The Last Airbender lately. I love the way the animators draw mouths in that show (a curious thing to be fond of, admittedly, but nonetheless true.) For me, the eyes in Avatar are nothing spectacular, but the mouths are masterpieces. I tried my darnedest to emulate the mouths in a couple of panels, but... alas, it was not to my satisfaction. Not remotely so.

And then, I thought I had a fun Easter Egg for this. I (no longer) make any secret of my love for My Little Pony, and one trend among bronies is to pay special attention to a group of ponies that appear only in the background (with no speaking part, depicted character, or uttered names). I thought it would be cute to make EV caricatures of these background ponies and make them into the bystanders in panel 5.

Except, (even though I KNOW HE EXISTS) I could not find the fan-bestowed name nor a decent picture of the one male background pony I was thinking of. I suspect he was given a name by the show at one point, but I hadn't paid enough to notice. If the bystanders are all female, it doesn't raise any eyebrows in My Little Pony, but in my comic I figured it would make readers think something's going on -- especially since this is supposed to be an electronics store. I figured it would cheapen the Easter Egg to throw in some random of-my-own-invention males among the pony-caricature females, and I was running short on time anyway so I abandoned the effort.

Plus, I've been lazy with my inkwork, and haven't been erasing the sketch lines. That reflects in the final product with brown-red hazy fuzzies when you get close up. Not really a desirable or endearing feature for a comic.

I got through it, though, no worse for wear. I also have since drawing this updated GIMP to v2.8, which is much improved in many ways regarding text editing, so the dialogue bubbles should look a little better, after this. There is hope for the future.

Alek: "Would it gross you out if I told you what kinds of invasive procedures are required to remove a battery-sized object from Chinchilla's sinuses?"

Sandy: "Puh-leeze. I'm Fenic's sister. His last bone-marrow operation, he made the doctors give him locals so he could stay awake and take pictures."
"He wants it to be our Christmas card."

Alek: "Chinchilla once sold all his toenail clippings to a guy in Uzbekistan."
Sandy; "Fenic once cracked half the joints in his body -- in a church."
Alek: "Chinchilla sucks on (an occasionally swallows) his ears when he's bored."
Sandy: "Fenic gives me weather forecasts about his dandruff. I fear the phrase 'whiteout blizzard' more than the apocalypse."

Alek: "Anyway, long story short, they don't let you keep the battery afterward."
Sandy: "We have gross brothers."

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